Dean Hall Was Angered About WarZ Damaging DayZ's Reputation

When you have a mod called DayZ and then announce that a full standalone is in the works called DayZ and then you have some other group jump up and claim they have a game called WarZ in the works and then chaos and bad press follows, it can end up looking bad for anyone involved with anything with a 'Z' in its title. Well, Dean “Rocket” Hall, the lead designer on the upcoming DayZ standalone, expressed his frustrations with the whole ordeal.

Eurogamer [via GI.biz] managed to nab the quotes from a comment Hall made on a Reddit thread where many of the DayZ fanboys congregate, with Hall saying...

"I'm quite hurt personally because anyone can see how similar the words are, and while the average gamer knows the difference, individual people don't,".... "I've had family members/close friends mistake the difference and confront me about what they believed was unethical behaviour they thought I was making.

"I really don't think anyone can understand just quite how exasperated that can make you feel when you've gambled everything on something, put your whole self and reputation on the line. So it hasn't made my life very pleasant, and I disagree entirely with the conduct and how consumers have been treated."

Hall also expressed his anger about something as close to DayZ (namely the WarZ) giving the zombie survival genre such a bad rep before it even properly got off the ground.

Most people who followed the fiasco easily side with Dean Hall and the rest of the crew at Bohemia Interactive given that the WarZ fiasco left a bad taste in the mouths of anyone who felt duped into putting money into the blatant cash-grab. From false advertising to banning users who brought out the game's downfalls and glitches on the forums, The WarZ was a perfect example of how not to launch a game, which ultimately resulted in the title being pulled from digital distribution portals and the developers issuing an apology to the gaming community.

Nevertheless, the popularity of the zombie survival mod left many big pubs within the industry also scrambling to toss something together, so don't be surprised that you'll see a lot of secondary, XBLA/PSN spin-offs arriving sometime this upcoming fall. Hopefully by then Hall and crew at Bohemia Interactive – especially now that the rest of the team is out of prison – can get back to work on the DayZ standalone and get it out as fast and as polished as possible.